


Don't Disappear

by MCUsic_to_my_ears



Category: The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger
Genre: Depression, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, This is really sad, and then their teacher gave us an assignment that was basically telling us to write fan fiction, written by someone who has spent too long thinking about Catcher, yay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 08:20:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8242675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MCUsic_to_my_ears/pseuds/MCUsic_to_my_ears
Summary: The events leading up to The Catcher in the Rye from Allie's point of view. Reflects on how his death truly affected his brother and who Holden is telling the story to. Note: there are citations in the book, because this was a school project and we had to do that, but they don't really get in the way of anything. Also, there's a bunch of 40s slang and references, (yay research) but it shouldn't really get in the way of your understanding





	

You don’t really expect the loneliness. Sure, you think that you’ll be a _ lone _ , you’ll be dead, of course you’re alone, but you don’t expect to be  _ lone _ ly. You think that you’ll be with the others that have passed on, or that people will always be visiting you, or your grave, or that maybe there won’t be anything at all. 

I wasn’t alone at first. When it all started, I mean, when they diagnosed me in Maine, they never left me in a room all on my own. There were doctors and nurses and my parents and  _ Hol _ den _.  _ But then it got bad, the pneumonia did. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t eat because there was something in my throat that I couldn’t get out and everything felt weighed down and the  _ can _ cer, which was a new discovery unto itself (Salinger, 38), made it impossible for me to fight the disease, or so they said. They didn’t realize what it was until it was too late.  _ Ev _ eryone was scared,  _ ev _ eryone was praying.  _ Ev _ eryone except for Holden. He’d just sit beside me and tell me a story about school. It was the early in the summer then, so he was back from school and he had loads of stories that I hadn’t heard yet. 

My favorite was one he’d heard from a kid named John Wilson at Horace Mann School, where he went last year. John had said that in his apartment building over Christmas break, he saw this little girl, in a swell dress from the eighties , smiling at him. She looked normal at f _ ir _ st, according Holden, but then she started coming closer and closer to John, before they were both sprinting down to the elevator. “But when he turned around, then girl had disapp _ ear _ ed,” Holden teased. I’d laughed at the dopey voice that he used every time he told a ghost story. Sure, they were  _ sca _ ry, and I believe now more than ever that they were real,  why did I have to believe them? I want to go home. He told me stories like that every day in that last week, but then Holden didn’t come back. 

Our  _ mo _ ther made him go home, and Dad stayed at the hospital with me during that night. It started out like most of the fits had, I couldn’t catch my breath, and something was in my throat and I tried to cough it up, but I couldn’t. I felt hot and cold at the same time and I kept wishing that Holden was there, because his voice took me out of the leukemia (38), it made me feel normal, healthy, even. 

“Allie, are you okay?” my dad asked. I looked up, tears prickling my eyes and I showed him my newly blood stained hands, too scared to speak. “Nurse!” he called, “Nurse! Someone!” But I think we both knew it was too late, I was too feverish and everything  _ hu _ rt and all I wanted to do was say good-by, so that I could stop feeling so awful. There were people rushing into the hospital room, and placing something over my mouth and nose and—

Suddenly, I was just  _ stan _ ding there, and I could see my  _ bo _ dy and I still couldn’t breathe, but I didn’t need to and it was maybe okay. Dad left. 

He left and the doctors covered me with a white sheet. I had to follow the body,  _ my  _ body, all the way to the Undertaker , who was back in New York. I was alone, even though there was a man driving the hearse. I sat beside the casket, since I couldn’t leave arm’s length of my body, no matter how much I wanted to run away, to go be with my family, to be with Holden. He would know what to do, he would make feel a little less scared. A little less like I wasn’t trapped and alone. He’d tell me a story, just like he always did and make me feel better. But there was no Holden now, no D.B, no Phoebe. There was no one, but the driver, and he couldn’t see me. He couldn’t help me, just like the Gypsy couldn’t help that woman on the radio. 

She just wanted to know that her lover would be faithful, or maybe old Billy Reid did, he was the fella that wrote the song, I wasn’t really sure. It was an odd ball song, probably because it was written by a Tommy . But I liked the dish that was singing, she had a real nice voice; I’m not kidding. 

I was thinking about that song when I finally saw Holden again. It had been stuck in my head for days, since I was all alone in the cemetery and there was nothing else to think about. I think everyone else went to Heaven, except for me. I think they left me here. My family’s buried here, at least some of them. The rest were at the funeral, except for Holden and Phoebe (155), but now I could see Holden, walking down the path to where I was sitting. I stood up, and walked to the edge of my body’s feet, as close as I could get to him. “Holden!” I called out, smiling brightly. He didn’t react. Sometimes, when you’re lonely for a really long time, you forget that you’re invisible, that you’re  _ de _ ad even. 

He had a white cast all around his right hand, all around it, and he was holding it close to his 

chest, like it still hurt. He tripped on some of the unsteady ground as he approached, and I reached out to catch him, but I couldn’t. I’d forgotten I couldn’t leave my body and that I couldn’t touch anyone either, it felt like forever since I had seen someone I knew, but it had really only been a day. 

But there he was, except he didn’t seem like himself, I couldn’t really place it. Maybe he was on hop or something, I don’t know. He looked tired, more tired than I’d ever seen him before. Sure, Holden liked to stay up late and shoot the bull with old D.B. But this was a different kind of tired. It wasn’t a physical sort of thing, it was like everything had been taken out of him, all his life. It was like he was about to be buried too. It depressed me to think about it. 

Holden stayed standing, holding himself so as to protect his injured hand from… me. Or the wind or something. I smiled at him again, “Hi- _ de _ -ho , Holden,” I greeted. Holden looked away, over to where our parents were standing. They were pretending to visit my Great Aunt Margaret, but you could see them looking over to where me and Holden were. Probably because she wasn’t by her marker. 

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” he said, finally, his face wilting. His words were cluttered, drawn out, and you could tell he was hopped up. “I was in the hospital, on account that I hurt my hand,” he almost smiled at that. “I, um, I was going to sleep in the garage Thursday night, when I found out you were—

“I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it. I even tried to break all the windows in the station wagon, but my hand was already broken and everything by that time, and I couldn’t do it” (39). He wouldn’t look up, just kept staring at the stone I was now sitting on, right where my feet were dangling. He let out a shaky laugh, and glanced at our parents again, this time with barely concealed tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Allie; Christ, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to- I didn’t mean to break the goddam windows. I’ll make it up to you. No kidding, I will. Don’t worry,” he swore, taking pygmy steps toward me. “I’m sorry, kid, I’ll make it up to you,” he repeated, and it finally dawned on me that he wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to himself, reassuring himself, but the words were just being handed to me as consolation prize. They didn’t mean anything, they weren’t even  _ mea _ nt for me. 

Despite that, I replied, desperately trying to get his attention. “It’s okay, Holden,” I promised him. “It’s okay, I forgive you. You don’t have to make it up to me. I’m not mad; I’d never be mad at you, Holden!” I nearly screamed because he couldn’t hear me. No one could hear me and I was so alone and why the hell couldn’t anyone  _ hear _ me!?

On top of all of the panic coursing through me, rain started to pour from the sky. I hadn’t noticed the clouds before, but now they the drowning me and Holden and I couldn’t breathe on account that I forgot I didn’t need to. “Holden, dear, we need to go,” our mother said, walking over to where I stood. She was holding a single, white flower, and held it out for Holden to take. He didn’t.

“It’s not right,” he announced instead (155), not turning away from me, even though the rain was soaking through us- through him. The rain didn’t touch me. Other visitors were running for their cars, flowers left to rot. Not like they’d do any good; “[w]ho wants flowers when you’re dead?” (155). “What’s not right, Holden?” Mother asked. Holden shook his head, “We can all get into our cars and turn on our radios and all and then go somewhere nice for dinner- all of us except Allie,” he argued (156), stepping back when Dad tried to reach for his arm. “Holden, it’s only his  _ bo _ dy that’s here, his  _ sou _ l’s in Heaven,” Dad told him (156).

“No, I’m not!” I shouted, waving my arms frantically, even climbing on top of the stone. “I’m right  _ he _ re! Why won’t you  _ lis _ ten to me?!” I felt my insides ripping apart, and I want to barf or scream or cry. Everything was blind panic, because my mother didn’t tell me to step down from the slippery surface. She didn’t look over. She didn’t know I was still there. 

“I just wish he wasn’t here, that’s all,” Holden muttered, allowing himself to be pulled away from where I stood, long forgotten by my family, the flower still dangling from my mother’s hand. “Don’t go!” I yelled after them, tears streaming down my face. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I don’t mean to yell! I’m sorry, don’t go! I love you!” I choked out. 

They didn’t hear me. 

That wasn’t Holden, I decided. That couldn't be the  _ real _ Holden, he wouldn't just _ lea _ ve me like that, not like how he had the day before all this “madman stuff” (1) started up. He and this Bobby Fallon kid who “used to live quite near us in Maine… were going over to Lake Sedebego on [their] bikes”, they had their lunches and BB guns and everything (98). I asked if I could go with them, but Holden laughed at me, saying, “You’re ‘a child’, Allie, you’ll get hurt” (99). I “didn’t get sore about it” (99), I don’t usually. Except it hurt now, since I had to miss out on so many things, and I missed that one crummy adventure before I was even out of time. 

Holden brought that day up, once, on his fifth visit. He apologized; he had made a habit of apologizing recently. At first, Holden came to visit me every single weekend, for the rest of that summer. But then he had to go back to school, and I saw him less and less. The decline really started with the new school year, the year I would’ve gone to a private school and have been living on campus for the first time, like Holden. We would’ve gone to the same school, old Horace Mann, like we had in when we were younger. 

“I don’t know why, Allie,” he told me his first weekend back from school, “But all the sudden, I can’t  _ foc _ us. Nothing’s interesting anymore, I guess. I used to love English, but now I can  _ bar _ ely keep my head up,” he confided in me. Holden’s the only one who still treats me like a person, even though we can’t communicate, even if he never looks me in the eye (171). No one does. 

I wasn’t worried at first, “Maybe all your teachers are drips or something,” I offered as an explanation. I didn’t think he was going into a decline ,  I didn’t know, I couldn’t help. I  _ can’t _ help. But it became more apparent as time went on, when his grades started doing so p _ oor _ ly that he wasn’t invited back to Horace Mann. “I don’t want to go back to a place so ‘full of phonies’ like old Horace Mann, anyway. I really don’t,” Holden lied (131). I could see the tears in his eyes as he continued, “They want me to see a psychoanalyst again on account of my ‘recent behavior’,” he quoted in a mocking voice, looking over to where our parents waited by the car. My mother had already been dragged away by my dad, because she was “nervous as hell” (158), and Holden had told me that it was my fault.  I’m so sorry, Mom. “But I talked them out of it. I don’t  _ need _ a psychoanalyst. I’m  _ fine _ .” I don’t think he was talking to me anymore, he wasn’t even looking near me. He was looking up, where I  _ des _ perately wanted to be. 

“All psychoanalysts are phony anyway.” 

‘ _ Phony’  _ (3).

_ ‘I really do’  _ (15).

Those were the newest addition to his vocabulary; they came right after “ _ I’m sorry”  _ and I don’t think any of those words exist to him anymore. They were just sounds to him, apologies and excuses that were covering up the gray suffocating his soul.  He’s dying. But I didn’t realize it was that bad until it was too late. He seemed so normal, telling me stories about this mellow man named Luce that was his student advisor from Whooton School (143), where he went after he “got the ax” at old Horace Mann (4). He told me that Luce was always making all the other barbs paranoid that the others were flits (143). “He’s ‘sort of flitty himself’, I’m not kidding. I think that’s why he’s making us think we’re going to ‘turn into a flit or something’,” Holden blathered anxiously (143). He looked worse than he had when he’d first visited me, his shoulders sagged as if they wanted to succumb to the earth and his breath sounded emotionally labored. “I doubt he’s a flit, Holden,” I chided, even though I had long since stopped hoping that my words would affect him. “People don’t always have to be bad.”  Times don’t always have to be bad, don’t let them be bad.

Most people only came during bad times, mourners coming to bury the dead, to say good-by, to remember. It was the final bow of a person’s life,  it was supposed to be mine, but I missed the curtain call. But they’re all petty, and whenever it starts to rain, memorials are cut short and let themselves forget about us. My  family parents were petty. The second time it rained and Holden  and I were talking, they dragged him away.  He didn’t stop them like he had before. They don’t realize how close I am, I don’t think they want to.  I don’t think they miss me, they forgot me, please don’t leave.

“It’s just like last year, Allie. All of the sudden, I can’t focus on a goddam thing they say. I don’t get any of their phony lessons, all I hear is the kids talking about bullshit and able grables who would never give them the time of day and it’s all pointless, Allie. ‘You ought to go to a boys’ school sometime.’ They’re ‘full of phonies’,” he complained (131), pacing around my stone for a bit, before stopping and almost looking into my eyes, before dropping his head back down. “You’d hate them,” he muttered sullenly, just as the rain started, “You really would.”

He stopped visiting me less than a year later. I saw him once more,  and I’ve been terrified ever since. “‘[H]e jumped out the window.’ ‘I just thought something fell out the window, a radio’-” (170). Tears are streaming down his face and he’s breathing funny.

“No, Holden,” I begged, but he couldn’t hear me, he couldn’t stop. 

“- or a desk or something, not a  _ boy _ or anything” (170). He keeps going, he won’t stop, can’t stop.  Please for the love of God stop! “And I heard all these people running, and I threw on a robe and I followed them all downstairs. And ‘there was old James Castle laying right on the stone steps and all. He was dead, and his teeth, and blood, were all over the place, and nobody would even go near him’” (170). He’s crying in earnest now, gasping for breath  and I think he’s dying. “Mr. Antolini ‘was the one that finally picked up’ James. He ‘felt his pulse and all, and then he took off his coat and put it over James Castle and carried him all the way over to the infirmary. He didn’t even give a damn if his coat got all bloody’” (174). He stayed silent for a couple beats, collecting his thoughts, giving himself space to weep.

“Allie, I think I wish I could stay with you,” he said, tears finally subsiding, all emotion draining from his voice. “No, you don’t, Holden. You would freeze to death,” I told him, sitting back on my stone. “I think I wish I was with you in Heaven,” he whispered, running his hand through his hair, as he continued, “James was wearing my turtle neck. We’ve worn the same clothing; he died in my _ shi _ rt, Allie. He  _ kill _ ed himself in my shirt” (171). 

“Holden, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” I yelled straight at him, “You don’t want to be trapped her with me, you don’t want to disappear like this!” I was crying now, as our parents were taking Holden away. 

“Don’t let them do anything!” I screamed at them, tears dripping down my face, “Don’t let him join me here! I’d rather be a _ lon _ e!” But there wasn’t anything I could do, there  _ nev _ er was. I was decaying, not just my body, but  _ me _ . My ties to what was left, my dreams, my fears,  my love. It was all decaying.  Along with my sanity.

Sometimes, I think I still hear Holden, even though it’s been almost a year since I last saw him. Yesterday,  I think I’m sure I heard him say, “Okay. Go home and get your bike and meet me in front of Bobby’s house. Hurry up” (99). I wanted to, I even tried, except I can’t leave my body, I can’t let go of that connection.  If I do, I don’t know what will happen to me, please help me, it’s decaying . But that's not the worst of it. The worst of it was when he was begging me to save him. “Allie, don’t let me disappear” (198). I looked around, but Holden wasn’t there. He was never there anymore. “Allie, don’t let me disappear!” he said again.

“Holden?” I asked, walking the length of my body. “Holden, I swear I’m not insane…” But he didn’t stop,  _ why won’t he stop?  _ I felt tears in my eyes. “Allie, don’t let me disappear. Please, Allie!” he shouted (198), but he wasn’t there.

“Holden, it’s okay! I swear it’s okay! You won’t disappear, not like me— I won’t let you, you’ll be okay!” But I couldn’t promise that; how could I? I didn’t know where he was. I thought he was dying,  I think he’s dying . “Thank you,” he’d whisper every so after, in between the bouts of sheer panic.

But now, I don’t know what happened to Holden. I don’t know if he’s okay, or if he just disappeared. Like I did. The only reason I know he’s not dead is because he would’ve been buried right by me, and—

I can hear tires pulling to a stop and I look up. I  _ know  _ that car and he’s not dead. The car’s doors are being thrown open, and I see Holden walking out, along with my mother,  and oh my God, Holden where have you been? He walks down to where I’ve been sitting  for the last few centuries , and I think I could see that all of the weight is off his shoulders, like from before all this “madman stuff” (1) started up, years ago. “Holden, where have you been?” I ask, worry dripping from my voice, like I’m his parent. “I’m sorry, I know it’s been a while.” My heart stops. It’s almost like we’re having an actual conversation. He looks down for a long while, even after I promise him, “It’s okay, God, it’s okay, Holden. I’m so glad you’re okay.” 

Just as the silence was about to become crippling, apprehension filling my bones, I hear his voice pipe up again, softly, a stark contrast to his normally jovial, deflective tone. “If you really want to hear about it,” Holden begins, and for the first time in a long time, I think, he smiles. “The first thing you’ll want to know is…” (1). 


End file.
